


love you forever, like you for always

by queenofthecon



Series: keep holding on (to me) [2]
Category: Bon Appétit Test Kitchen RPF, Chef RPF
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Pregnancy, weird framing devices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:03:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22122007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofthecon/pseuds/queenofthecon
Summary: Claire's put this off long enough. She can tell him anything, everything, but this is huge. This is world-shattering, life-changing, and terrifying.Claire's pregnant and she just wants Brad to be there.
Relationships: Brad Leone & Claire Saffitz, Brad Leone/Claire Saffitz
Series: keep holding on (to me) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1558987
Comments: 12
Kudos: 73





	love you forever, like you for always

**Author's Note:**

> A continuation/overlap of [_for me, this isn't over_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21623461) told from Claire's perspective, but can be read as a standalone fic imo. My apologies for putting this off for so long but I hope the wait is worth it. 
> 
> Please remember that this is RPF; none of this is real and nor do we want it to be. This is a work of pure fiction and no harm is ever intended. Many thanks to the wonderful writers on here who keep spurring me on to work harder at getting better. God, y'all are so fucking talented.

** Lentil **

On the face of it, this entire thing has to be one hundred percent, unequivocally Brad Leone’s fault. Nobody would disagree, if they knew.

In her apartment, in her bathroom surrounded by trash and damp towels and the mould around the shower, Claire’s hand wavers and she hesitates to read the white stick in her fingers. She holds it like a grenade about to blow up in her face, checks a hundred times on the box because she’d never have believed it if there wasn’t evidence of it right in front of her eyes. Blue lines, strong and clear and yes, she’s pregnant. Pregnant with Brad’s baby, the Brad who makes it a point not to look at her face since that one night stand and how could she have been so dumb to fall for and fuck her best friend and ruin everything? It should be different, Claire thinks, it was supposed to have been different. He was supposed to love her like she loved him, and maybe he could have loved her after too. But it’s been six weeks of nothingness, of fear and anxiety and tears and now she knows why she’s been feeling out of sorts.

Six weeks. Six weeks. Suddenly she feels like throwing up. It’s a fluke, it’s a false positive, a wrong test. It happens, doesn’t it? Except she knows it’s real. She _feels_ it deep in her bones and _wants_ it so badly that it’s fucking terrifying.

Like every pregnant woman before her, because clichés are cliché for a reason, Claire turns to her side and studies her body in the mirror over her sink. Nothing’s really changed – there’s no bump or firmness or movement – but she can feel it still. Her fingers are hesitant, glide over her stomach and imagine what it’s going to be like to be a Mom, to have Brad’s baby, to have him be with her. It’s a dream she’s having more and more, of him that night, kissing her, wrapping his whole self around her and giving in. Her palm settles on her soft skin and she wonders what he’ll say, what he’ll do when she tells him. It hadn’t been the plan – the big plan she’d mapped out at 16 when faced with all the choices in the world – but she’s 33 years old and maybe this is her plan after all, to have a baby with a man she’d slept with a grand total of once.

_What if he doesn’t want you?_ Anxiety says_. What if he walks away?_

Just a few more weeks, just to be sure, just because nothing’s ever certain, just because she’s cursed.

It doesn’t stop her from downloading an app on her phone, from checking her dates and researching, from reading all she can about the cells dividing and growing inside her, realising why she’s had a ravenous appetite the past few days, why she’s been feeling weird. Her baby’s barely a cluster of cells, no bigger than a single lentil, but it’s there and it’s her’s, no matter what happens.

Not even Brad can take that away from her.

** Kidney Bean **

“Mom?” Claire says down the phone, biting her lip at the five positive pregnancy tests on her coffee table. She’d thrown up twenty minutes ago and her throat _burns. _“What do I do?”

“_You tell him, honey,_” her mother replies softly, understandingly, a tone Claire’s maybe heard once or twice in her life before. “_How far along are you, you think?_”

She doesn’t need to think because she knows. “Eight weeks last Saturday,” she feels her stomach gurgle and complain, and she has to bite back the nausea. “Why aren’t you mad at me?”

“_Because you’re scared. Doesn’t matter whether you’re married or have a boyfriend or whatever, every time you first realise you’re pregnant, it’s scary. I was terrified when I got pregnant with your sister. Your Dad didn’t say anything for a half hour after I told him._”

Claire lies back on the couch because it’s not the first time she’s realising, it’s just the first time she’s told anyone. Two weeks of hope, of wishful thinking that Brad would somehow magically know that something was up, and she’d just overflow with it all and he’d love her regardless. Except he doesn’t because he’s frustratingly not psychic and projecting her thoughts at him from across the room doesn’t count, apparently.

But her mother doesn’t know all that. “I _am_ scared,” Claire replies honestly, staring at the stain on her ceiling. “I feel like crap.”

There’s something akin to nostalgia in Sauci’s voice. “_Yeah that’ll be a few more weeks at least._” Claire groans internally at the idea. “_You have to tell him. Don’t put it off._”

What if – she wants to say – what if he wants nothing to do with her, what if he turns around and runs and she’s alone, again, with another broken heart. She can’t do it alone; Claire has breakdowns over failed nougat, for fuck’s sake.

“I’ll tell him,” is all she says to her mother. “He’s in Vermont for another week though.”

“_Claire…”_ Sauci warns.

“I will tell him when he gets back,” Claire mutters, her head starting to pound. “It’s just what if he doesn’t-”

“_Don’t, don’t do that,_” her mother says sharply, laying down the law. “_You’re scared right now, I know, but honestly, honey, what happens between you and Brad doesn’t matter for now. He’s got a right to know you’re having his baby first. All the rest you have time to figure out._”

Her Mom’s right, of course, because Sauci Saffitz is the singular fountain of wisdom, knowledge and truth in all of her adult life and Claire drinks every drop she can give. It doesn’t stop the nausea at the idea of telling him: Brad hasn’t texted, and she doesn’t text back. Claire’s never done communication well and this? It’s not something you can say over the phone to the man you’ve loved from a hidden place for more years than she can count.

“I know,” Claire says, tugging on her shirt idly, fingertips skimming her non-existent bump. “The app says the baby’s the size of a kidney bean now.”

Sauci chuckles over the phone. “_Trust you to get one that compares fetal growth to food._”

Claire chuckles too and feels the weight of this secret lifting from her shoulders. It’s real now she’s told her mother, somehow.

“I’ll tell Brad when he gets back from travelling, Mom,” she promises. “It can’t be over the phone, not like this. I gotta figure out where he’s at, I need to see his face.”

“_Me too, Claire,_” her mother says softly, understandingly again. “_Because if he hurts you, I’m gonna kill the boy myself._”

As usual, Claire doesn’t doubt her mother.

** Lime **

Eight weeks becomes twelve, and she’s still said nothing. It’s never the right time, she’s scared and angrier the longer he doesn’t seem to want to be near her, the more they find excuses to leave each other’s company as quick as possible. Every word she says feels terse and wrong in her mouth, and it’s never enough.

Brad can’t love her, but it doesn’t make her own silence right either.

Twelve weeks and she’s out of the danger zone, twelve weeks and the baby’s the size of a lime and she starts to notice the small differences in the line of her stomach as if she’s eaten too much. He doesn’t notice, nobody does, and maybe it’s just a matter of timing instead.

It doesn’t come; another day or two. Another week until he breaks her heart. Claire’s never been great at ripping off band-aids and this one is keeping a gaping wound from opening up. But she does this, she knows, the longer she waits the more it builds up in her head. She decides what someone’s reaction is gonna be before they even have it. Apparently, that applies to the father of her child, too.

Brad’s a good man, a wonderful man. She just needs to take a breath and be brave.

** Apple **

Claire hardly believes what’s happening. Again. One minute she’d been in hormonal tears at the nasty comments about her on a video and the next, Brad’s telling her he loves her on his knees in their hiding place on the abandoned 30th floor.

He loves her, he loves her before she’d had the courage to tell him anything, and that means the _world_. He loves her beyond _having_ to love her. Except, he has no idea what she’s done, and it’s got to be now, she tells herself, she has to open herself up to hurt and anger so it can heal, and he can love her without obstacle.

Claire sinks into Brad’s arms as he curls around her, placing kiss after kiss on her lips like gold, like he’s had weeks of deprivation from her touch he wants to make up for. Her nerves are lighting up with want and need but she has to rip the band-aid off before it gets stuck completely. “Brad, I need to tell you-”

“What?” he smiles sloppily against her lips, naïve and sweet and unknowing, but she stills and pulls away suddenly, looking at him and pleading for him to not change. “Claire?”

“I’m pregnant,” she whispers before she can chicken out.

Brad just looks at her, his arms still wrapped around her and Claire feels like glass. “Wha-you’re… pregnant?” he swallows, lets her go, she hurts. “We’re having a kid?”

All she can do is nod because he’s sat back away from her with his eyes stormy and wide and bright all at once. He doesn’t doubt, though, doesn’t ask if it’s his, because he knows her too well or hopefully loves her enough that it doesn’t matter. Claire wants so badly to go back to him loving her with no complication but it’s the grenade in her hand, now too dangerous to keep carrying alone.

“It’s uh… about 15 weeks,” she sniffles when he still hasn’t moved or spoken or done anything. “Size of an apple.” His eyes flicker to her stomach and she watches him look at her properly for the first time, sees the swell there you’d only notice if you were looking at it. It’s too difficult, too uncomfortable to hide it now. “I should have told you sooner, I know-”

But he’s kissing her again, his grin wide against her lips and the tears track down the softer curves of her hot cheeks. “I don’t care,” Brad says, laughing as he pulls back, presses his forehead to hers. “Fuck. I know I should be pissed or whatever dumb fucking idiots do, but I…” he shakes his head, knows the feeling of it. “Fucking love you so much.”

The relief and weight from her lifted is the best feeling – Claire’s light again, the fear and the hurt from that night gone to the ether. He’d told her, laid himself bare and that’s why he’ll always be stronger than her in that way, more willing and open, sensitive to all of it.

“I’m sorry I was scared,” Claire admits, realising how she should have just trusted him not to walk away from her, this, their new family. “And I don’t know how this is all gonna work, and I keep waking up thinking I’m in a fever dream, but I need you.”

Brad’s arms keep her from shattering, make her feel whole and warm and loved beyond measure. “We’ll make it work, babe, c’mon,” he says into her neck, burying his face there. “Fuck, I’m gonna be a Dad.”

Laughter breaks through and she nods as he holds her tighter. “You’re gonna be the best Dad in the world,” she says, feeling his hands clutch to the small of her back, protective, strong, tender. “We’ll figure it out.”

He kisses her again, with love and thanks and worship on an abandoned floor of One World Trade Center.

** Avocado **

“Avocado?” Brad repeats, staring at her phone like he doesn’t get the concept. “Claire, you sure that thing’s accurate? I feel like you’d be bigger if the baby was an avocado. He was an apple like a week ago!”

Claire’s laying on the sonographer’s table, nervous and excited and scared to share this with Brad. The first scan she barely remembers anything of except that rapid, pulsing heartbeat, the one that had rang in her ears as she lay there alone and it had hit her in a tangible way: now is different, now is a hundred times better. His broad hand smooths and worries over hers on the table as they wait for the doctor or the nurse (she can’t remember which it is).

“_You _ask all the pants I can’t wear now; I’m way bigger,” Claire says, smiling as he reads through the information closer than she’s ever seen him do anything. It’s endearing and she has to tell him again how she loves him because it’s bursting at her seams. “Brad, I-”

But the door opens and there’s introductions and of course he charms their sonographer off her feet because he’s _Brad _and that’s what he does to women over fifty; they’re drawn to him like a magnet. Claire just grins and watches, knowing how lucky she is that he’s the man he is, someone who’d dash through a hospital to make it to their first scan together five minutes early, pulling her along because he’s so excited to see their kid.

“Holy shit,” Brad says as the scanner presses into her stomach, gel all over her skin. There’s their little blob, a mass of black and white lines with a little more form, and he’s looking at it with pride and tears and she wants to cry from the rush of love she sees bloom in his eyes. “I got no idea what I’m lookin’ at but it’s beautiful, babe,” he clutches at her hand tight, presses a kiss to her knuckles. “Wow.”

That wonderful booming, rapid thrum-beat of their child’s heart echoes loudly in the room and she sees the tears streak down his face. The sonographer gives them a moment alone to listen and to be together, to share the magic and Claire can’t thank her enough for it. Brad lets go of himself then and just listens, leans up and kisses her and she can’t believe how stupid she’d been not to have told him the second she knew. All these lost moments, all the fear and pain, they melt away when he holds her hand and cries hearing their baby’s heartbeat.

“Thank you,” she mutters, tearing her eyes away from the scanner screen. “I was so scared you’d just walk away. I don’t even know why now.”

Brad swallows and strokes a rough thumb over her knuckles, looking into her soul. His eyes are red and watery but warm, smiling with depth and fear, too, fear that reassures her it’s okay to still be scared. “No way,” he says lowly. “Never gonna let you down, fuckin’ scout’s honour, okay? You want me to walk across broken glass, I’d do it for you. You and him.”

“Or her,” Claire interjects. “Might be a her.”

“You and him or her,” he clarifies. “My real Dad, he was a fucking asshole, Claire. Broke my Mom when he walked out on us. Never seen him since, and I don’t wanna. I am _never_ gonna be that guy, yeah?” he presses his forehead to their joined hands, two of his clasping her one tiny one, and feels his hot tears on her fingertips. “Can’t do that to you.”

Claire’s heard this before, on those unguarded moments talking about names and families and his pain, one she wishes she could take away. It makes her realise what kind of man he is and isn’t, how stupid she’d been to be scared of him walking away. He’d never let himself.

“I know,” she runs her thumb over his hand too, feels the urge to protect him as much as she’s sure he’ll protect her. “We got this, yeah?”

“Yeah. Always.”

** Mango **

They figure things out.

A whole month passes of Brad waking her up every morning with his lips on her stomach, talking endlessly to their baby about how they’re gonna love the world and all the awesome adventures in store; he talks about everything and even where the best lox and bagels in the city are because Brad’s lost the battle about moving to New Jersey straight away and leans into the skid of being a New Yorker. One day, she’s promised him, when there’s enough money for a decent house with a back yard, she’ll move to New Jersey and she means it because his family’s there – his Mom and his sister and his sister’s kids too. Claire wants the full Leone life, one of domestic love and fun and Brad digging up dirt for his herb garden while their baby walks their first steps on the same grass Brad will keep growing forever, lush and green and verdant.

For now, though, it’s _their_ apartment in New York on the Upper East side. One that had been hers and is where they’ll bring their baby home from the hospital. The place of future midnight feedings and chaos and giggles and tantrums, she’s sure.

She’s awake before Brad for once, light barely breaking through their bedroom window onto her chest in the winter, rain falling as it always does. Claire can’t believe the size of her bump now, but it’s there, their little mango baby. The flutters are movements, stronger and more frequent and fucking _weird_ but she loves each one and relishes them all. He still palms her stomach until she has to bat his hand away from her, excited by every single one.

Her fingers feel the movement now, the one that had woken her up, underneath the taut skin on her stomach until the baby stills and quiets down, happy – she thinks – that she’s there and soothing. Of course, Brad’s kid loves attention from Claire, and the idea makes her smile.

Brad stirs as Claire turns and watches his eyes heavy with sleep, sweet in a way she’d never seen before she got pregnant. “Mornin’,” he grumbles softly, voice thick. “Kid wake you up?”

“Yeah,” Claire mutters, sliding onto her side. “I don’t mind much.” She watches Brad grin and captures it with a kiss, unable to resist and she licks her lips. “Brad, I’m so hungry,” she pouts. “I’m starving over here.”

“You are always fuckin’ hungry, babe,” he smooths her messy hair away from her face, kisses the top of her nose. “Whatcha wantin’?”

Claire already knows because it’s been the same for a month. “Like, those super tangy, sour grapes you got yesterday, oh my God, those were so good,” she bites her lip, sliding her hand over his bare chest, fingernails running through his chest hair. “And just like, a hunk of cheddar, something super savoury. But mostly the grapes. And saltines.”

He laughs warm as the sunlight on her skin, bright and bold. “Sour stuff huh? That’s what you’re craving?” Brad’s smile sparkles teasingly. “Sour grapes for Half-Sour Saffitz comin’ up…” he says, groaning as he gets up, their bed creaking and complaining as he does. “Fucking wearing me out already...”

The cravings continue for weeks – for salt and sour and intense flavours, for chili heat and curries and all the spice in the world. He indulges every single one but draws the line at her sudden love of Warheads when he reads up about malic acid.

** Cantaloupe **

“Ow,” Claire gasps and rubs her bump over her apron, soothing her side as the baby kicks her particularly hard. She’s finally getting to make Butterfinger bars after years of asking the company for permission and the kid decides to act up _now_, just as her sugar is spiking on the stove. “Goddamn it…”

Brad’s there when he can be, deciding to take a back seat on the travelling until after the baby’s born because she knows he can’t bear to miss another second. It drove her a little crazy at first, him hovering and worrying at her, carrying burdens he didn’t need to carry. But she’s six months pregnant now, just about, and there’s an extra ache in her back, and pressure just about everywhere so she’s letting him dote on her. The baby’s a cantaloupe, now, but it feels so much bigger than that: Claire is simply really, really _pregnant_.

“You good?” Brad asks, glancing over at her from his station. To anyone else, it’s casual, nonchalant, but Claire knows better. He can tell the weird pain cries over the general aches and kicks and lets her be once he’s decided she’s okay.

“Kicked again,” Claire replies, pouring liquid sugar into a mixer slowly with one hand while soothing her stomach with the other like it’s a routine. “I blame you.”

He grins widely and wipes his hands before grabbing a stool for her to sit on, wordlessly. “Hey, I tried to warn ya. My Mom says I damn near broke her rib one time. Leones are kickers, Claire. Big babies, too, I was like ten pounds and 21 inches at birth.”

“That’s not really helping,” she complains, sitting down on the stool. “I can’t believe you won’t even let me find out the sex of the baby.”

“Wait, you’re not finding out?” Chris asks, shoving something in the fridge behind the camera crew (none of this is gonna air except a few transition shots: Brad had made sure on threat of all the test kitchen cooks quitting that Claire got to have a normal pregnancy). “How can you not wanna find out?”

“Well-”

“Because it’s bad luck, Chris!” Brad interjects, going back to his station. “We ain’t gonna jinx this kid before it’s born so we’re not finding out, are we, Claire?”

Chris Morocco looks at her in his specific brand of _wow, Claire_ and she rolls her eyes. “Brad says it’s bad luck, somehow. Because that makes total sense, right? How is that even a thing? People find out all the time!”

“I think he just likes seeing you suffer,” Chris says and shakes his head, walking back to his recipe testing for the Easter edition. “It’s gotta be driving you crazy right, not knowing?”

She just hums in agreement. It does, pretty much, but Claire wants to let him have this, wants to share that surprise when the baby comes in a few months’ time. It doesn’t mean she can’t get pissy about _why_. “Carla, did you and your husband find out the sex of your kids before they were born?”

Carla, her hands buried in soapy water, looks at Claire like she’s crazy. “God, no, my grandmother would have killed me if she hadn’t been dead already. It’s bad luck!” she exclaims.

Brad throws his arms wide. “Right?! Thank you, fuckin’ finally.”

“Oh God,” Claire and Chris say in tandem.

After ten more minutes of resigning herself to a failed batch of peanut butter _stuff_, she leans and switches the mixer off, only to be met with the Bad Pain. Claire gasps again, her vision blurring as she stills on the stool, aching discomfort vibrating across her abdomen and into her ribs. Brad’s there in an instant this time, his broad hand protective on her stomach. She can’t really focus on his words but he’s there and it’s enough to make her breathe through it. 

“Bad kick?” he mutters into her neck softly, glaring at Kevin and his camera threateningly as she nods. “Okay, it’ll be gone in a second, that’s it, babe,” he keeps rubbing soft circles into her back as he crouches beside her, their hands joining on her belly. “There you go. We really need to come up with a placeholder name for this kid so I can practice my Dad voice, huh? Make sure they know who I am.”

He makes her laugh and the pain ebbs away as the baby turns slowly into Brad’s wide palm seemingly on purpose. “They know who you are, Brad,” she says softly into his ear.

Something changes, then.

** Cabbage **

Brad proposes to her in their kitchen two days before Valentine’s day, while there’s red royal icing crusting to her fingers in a mad rush to get out a last minute order because she can never say no when faced with a broad story about love and gestures and anniversaries. Brad’s even on one knee despite the mess on the floor and the mess everywhere, frankly. It’s chaotic and perfect.

His grandmother’s ring is beautiful; it’s vintage and obviously loved, and that touches her heart, but she has no idea what words to actually say to express the worry he’s seeing in her eyes.

“You’re not saying yes, Claire,” Brad blinks up at her from the floor. “Why aren’t you saying yes?”

There’s a lump in her throat. “I didn’t… I didn’t think you’d want-” she kinda trails off, still dumbfounded, a thousand thoughts trying to coalesce at once. “Fuck.”

“You’re having my kid, we live together, we work together…” Brad lists things off and she still doesn’t know. “I want to marry you, Claire, is that such a bad thing?”

The frosting bag oozes as she sets it down on the counter, wiping her hands on her apron before cupping his face, because she has to know, has to know why he’s really asking her this now when she’s seven months pregnant and knee-deep in heart shaped cookies and wants to destroy Valentine’s Day.

“You asking me to marry you because you think it’s the right thing or because you want me to be your wife?” she asks, scared and serious. “Because I can’t if it’s just because of this baby, Brad.”

He looks at her relieved and stands, red icing smudged on his cheeks from where she’d touched him. “I wanna marry you because I wanna be your husband,” he says, taking the ring from its box. “Wanna come home every day to this. To _you_. Claire, we don’t live normal lives, and I’m not so great with the words so, there’s this,” he gestures to the ring. “If you want it.”

It’s really quite unfair, she decides, that he’s got the bluest eyes with depths unfathomable she wants to dive into, unfair that he’s soft around the edges and unfair that his strong arms curl around her every night, that he’s made her see stars and beg with his name on her lips. It’s unfair that she gets to have him all to herself when no woman is as lucky as her.

“I want it,” she grins.

The ring just about fits over her slightly swollen fingers and he kisses her hard, both of them laughing as he crushes her body to him as much as he can with the bump in the way. Brad drops to his knees again and kisses her belly, her fingers running over his hair.

She does want this life, this insane life of weird, fleeting internet fame, of him and their children, being his wife and him being her husband, of frosting cookie hearts at 3am because she’s taken on too much as per usual. He’ll help her manage, because he’s Brad and she’s Claire, and now they’re a family.

“God, I can’t stand it sometimes. How much I love you and our little cabbage kid,” he grins, placing one final kiss somewhere near her bellybutton. “It’s like nothing I ever felt before.”

_She knows_, she says in her head.

** Pumpkin **

Their daughter is born just two days after her due date, which – he tells her – is late enough to count for the Saffitz part of her genes. Claire’s exhausted, in the worst pain of her life, sweaty and crying when the nurse places this red, wriggling baby on her chest. Claire bursts into tears and peers down at her little girl, their marvel, their miracle with her matted hair and wide eyes open to the world, begging to take in every inch before she can even discern shapes or colours.

“It’s a girl, a girl,” Brad’s got tears streaming down his face too and he kisses Claire’s head and her nose and her lips with endless praise not far behind each one. “Oh God, we got a girl,” he swallows as the baby stops crying and just seems to try and look for her father, arms and legs wild and free, unable to stop moving. She’s beautiful. She’s perfect, and theirs. Claire shakes from the love coursing through her.

Later, the pain has ebbed from excruciating to bearable. Their daughter is asleep in her father’s arms as he bounces her and even Brad’s energy is starting to wane from the 36 hours of being awake with Claire, from the panic of emergency stitches and the PICC line in Claire’s arm. It’s enough that their little girl is finally falling back to sleep so they can get a little rest too. It’s dark outside again, and Claire has no sense of what day it is or what time it might be – could be 5pm, could be midnight. She has no idea. All she knows is that he looks so goddamn beautiful with their newborn in his arms.

It’s all worth it. Every damn second.

“Your Mom was right about her being a big baby, huh?” Claire murmurs sleepily, warm and cosy and safe. “9lb 4oz. Felt bigger than a pumpkin.”

“Tried to warn ya,” Brad grins at Claire and places their sleeping daughter in the bassinet; she doesn’t even stir and seems as dead to the world as Claire feels. “Need a name still, babe. Gotta be a good name.” Brad perches on the bed next to Claire, his arm above her head and his lips to her sweaty temple.

It only takes her a second of them both staring at their sleeping daughter for Claire to know in her heart what’s right. “Sofia,” she mutters quietly. “Sofia Rose Leone. For your grandmother, and for mine, that’s what I want.”

She hears him sniffle and feels the secure weight of his arm at her torso, fingers interlocking with hers as Claire fights to stay awake. “It’s perfect,” Brad mutters as her eyes grow heavier and heavier from the exhaustion and the medication, the peace now that their daughter’s safe in the world. “So are you,” he whispers.

They’ll get married somewhere down the line, she’s sure. In a garden somewhere, with flowers in her hair and they’ll bicker over whether he can wear a bolo tie and his beanie (no, he can’t for the ceremony, her father would kill him) and they’ll dance to Springsteen and drink champagne and laugh with their friends and their family, old and new.

They’ll build a life and buy a home and fill it with love and laughter and cook every damn night.

They’ll argue over how much sugar to let their kids have, whether a hamburger is a sandwich, and whose turn it was to do the laundry (his).

Claire can’t _wait_ for her real life to begin.

**Author's Note:**

> For El.
> 
> Thank you.


End file.
